The first game on my backlog list is down! I went in to Black Myth Wukong a bit skeptical. Its received so much love and praise, its hard to believe it can be that good. I’ve played souls’like games since Dark Souls 1 and I’ve been in love with the genre ever since. 2023 was a crazy stacked year of amazing GOTY nominees, and after playing Lies of P, I was left wondering if it held my personal 2023 game of the year.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Black Myth Wukong in regards to whether it holds the title of a souls’like or if its just a simple action adventure. After 55 hours with the game, I got my thoughts…

Black Myth Wukong is absolutely stunning. Beautiful graphics, scenery, and character models. I would play it all over again just to experience it on a better PC. With that said, even with all its updates, there are quite a few performance hiccups that have me hesitant to say it ran well.

This game is based off of the classical Chinese novel ‘Journey to the West’. While you may find yourself a bit lost with the story at times, the games storytelling style is unique. You can absolutely see the inspiration from games like Elden Ring, but a little more in your face with what’s happening rather than small dialogues and a bread crumb trail that leads you to a who knows what.

In the six chapters of the game, you get to watch what they describe as “Music Videos”. These music videos tell gripping stories that get you invested in only a handful of seconds. The art style of them take on different forms of animation, including clay-motion. These can be watched over again from the main menu and is quite honestly one of my favorite parts about the game.

I don’t want to spoil the stories or how they implement them in to the main game. What I will say is that if you explore enough, you might find remnants from that story or a continuation of them. This game isn’t known for its narration, but its storytelling is absolutely worthy of praise.

The world Game Science made is a great mixture between a linear experience such as Dark Souls and it sprinkles some Elden Ring exploration in there, which is why it can easily be argued it is a souls’ like game. Let me explain…

You are absolutely on a linear path, some chapters more open for exploration than others, but for the most part you are never lost. I never felt overwhelmed by what the game was presenting to me.

While it is primarily a linear game, there are so many secrets to unfold, secret treasures, and secret stories with hefty rewards. The hefty rewards is a con and a pro. A pro because the rewards can be an absolute game changer, so much so, it will leave you thinking, “I don’t know how I would have made it through this boss without that skill.”.

The con of it being, what if I’m missing out by not finding the next greatest thing? I searched every crack and crevice of the game, almost maxing out my journal. So why am I feeling like I might have missed some things? Not a great feeling to have after pouring 55 hours in to a game.

So, the big question…

Is it more like Dark Souls or is it an Action Adventure Game?

Everyone wants to label this game a souls’like or an action adventure. My stance on that topic is…why can’t it be both? Lets do a list of comparisons to see how they stack up in similarities and differences.

• Shrines/respawning system is a copy paste.
• Story telling borrows a lot of influence from the Souls genre
• The exploration is heavily impacted by its souls’like influence.
• The foundation of its combat system is similar.
• HUD and Inventory management are almost copy and pasted.

However, as a souls’like fan, this game absolutely leans more towards action adventure. The main reasons are…

• Abilities are very powerful. Giving you an edge in battle that no souls game has ever offered. You simply can’t compare the abilities.
• There is no real punishment for dying. The biggest punishment is not getting potions back that you consumed.
• Difficulty pales in comparison.
• You can pause the game. This is a HUGE pro for players.

The fact that this game leans towards action adventure is a really great thing. I say that because the game gives you just enough to fill that void of a needing a new Souls game in your life. Don’t get me wrong, there are some boss fights in this game that made me want to pull my hair out. One in particular, I spent 3+ hours fighting. But that pay off was SO worth it! Black Myth Wukong features over 100 bosses, with only a few of them being a headache.

The feeling of accomplishment that you get from games like Elden Ring is still prevalent here despite its action adventure nature. It eases up on the difficulty enough so that you still feel like a real bad ass. The combat reminded me of the fast paced nature of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice but its difficulty was more in line with Lies of P.

The combat is easily my favorite part of this game. The game is incredibly fast paced and relies heavily on dodging. While I am a big fan of parrying, it was kind of a nice change of pace to not worry about that extra mechanic to use. The spells and transformations were so fun to use. Mixing up the combat and how I tackled the enemy was always a fun experiment in strategy.

The skill tree is also so vast, you can create your character to be a considerably different play style to the way I played. Which leads in to a good replay-ability factor.

I hope I’ve given you a good glimpse as to what its like to dive in to Black Myth Wukong. I had an amazing time with it and I am still pondering a NG+ run. Astro Bot was my personal 2024 GOTY and now I got some reconsidering to do.

As to my opening statement, I can absolutely see why fans clamored for this to be GOTY. It has all the makings of a GOTY contender. The biggest argument to that point is the way it changes the way you approach the game with every chapter: implementing new set pieces, skills, stories, and yes, even gameplay mechanics. I highly recommend Black Myth Wukong to not only my souls’like fans out there, but for anyone who has ever enjoyed a boss battle in their life!